SAN DIEGO – Day two of Cisco Live included major announcements around Cisco System Inc.’s collaborative tools suite.

During the day’s opening keynote session, as well as in a panel later in the day, Amy Chang, the senior vice-president of the collaboration technology group at Cisco, spoke about the importance of these types of tools and her vision for the future. People Insights, a tool that acts something like your own digital assistant, is a big part of it, she explained.

We’re delivering technology that works smoothly together and is backed by intelligence and business insights,” said Chang.

Amy Chang speaking on a panel at Cisco Live about the advancements in Cisco’s collaboration portfolio. Photo by Buckley Smith.

People Insights

The major announcement on day two was the addition of Cisco’s People Insights tool to the entire portfolio.

“This technology will be so foundational to build highly personalized experiences… really changing how we work,” said Amy Chang. “This is the type of experience we are talking about here.”

It can gather an entire portfolio of information on the individual you are interacting with; from newspaper articles to the financial details of the company they work for and many other useful insights. You can also add your own notes on people that will be included in their profile every time you interact with them over Cisco’s collaboration tools.

Previously only available on Webex Meetings, it will now be available on messaging, calling, and Jabber.

Unification

The second announcement was centred around the unification of the entire collaboration portfolio. To do so Cisco will be applying the same operating system to all of its devices and have designed all of its applications so that they will all be interoperable.

Additionally, the Webex application, which Cisco acquired over 10 years ago, will now work for messaging, calling, and meetings across a vast slate of applications like Microsoft O365, G-Suite, Salesforce, Jira, ServiceNow, and many others.

“Why should we not work hand in hand? Our customers want that. Google and Apple and Slack,” said Amy Chang. “And why would we not want that to be the case? And that philosophy you can see throughout our organization.”

In addition, tools like Microsoft Word can now be used directly within the Webex messaging platform.

Cisco also announced that Jabber and Webex will now be able to communicate; so that no matter your preference, you can now reach the people you need to easily.

Some other changes to the portfolio that were announced included:

-Transcription of meetings notes will now be available

-Co-editing through Google G-Suite tools will now be possible from Webex Teams

-The cloud-based Customer Journey Platform tool for customer service centres is now a part of the Webex portfolio

*Buckley Smith’s travel and accommodations to cover Cisco Live were paid for by Cisco. This article was not reviewed externally before publication.